Donna Campbell is quite proud of wasting Texas taxpayers’ money. She says so herself.
Republicans in the Texas Senate are also quite proud of passing laws for which there is ample evidence that, rather than saving taxpayer money, actually waste it. From reports around the country, we read of similar laws in Florida, Oklahoma and Georgia.
The bottom line – required drug tests for people seeking assistance benefits ends up costing taxpayers far more than is saved and fails to curb the number of prospective applicants, according to data cited in an ongoing legal battle with the State of Florida. The cost, about $10,000 per failed drug test, seems extremely high. In Florida, 98% of welfare recipients passed the test.
“These programs are expensive and they don’t work,” according to Jason Williamson, an attorney for the American Civil Liberty Union.
This Texas law, SB 21, is a bullying tactic in the classic sense. It is not bad enough to lose a job; now everyone applying for unemployment benefits may be required to submit to drug testing. Then, unless folks can prove they are under medical treatment (not including taking over the counter night time cold remedies), they lose unemployment benefits unless enrolled in a treatment program within seven days.
As we close in on the one-year anniversary of this law, it continues to wreak hardships on those who can least afford them. It is why I will fight to repeal it.
The question is: what is being accomplished with this legislation? Even giving my opponent the benefit of just not thinking this through, her bill-turned-law appears to be another legal way to eliminate people from public assistance without considering the consequences. Consider a mother with three children seeking unemployment assistance who fails the test. According to multiple drug rehabilitation services contacted in San Antonio, the nearest low or no cost treatment facility is in Waco, Texas. As an unemployed mother she must find care for the children, transportation and money for fuel to get to Waco and back. This does not even take into account the time spent waiting for an appointment and admission to the program.
SB 21 is not specific. It does not specify criteria for a drug treatment program versus drug counseling. In the meantime, what happens to her children? Do we just let them go hungry? And this is assuming that care for the children, while momma is away, is adequate. This does not sound like a law that has been well-designed or thought through. It is not viable even if rehabilitation were the goal.
Considering that corporate welfare fraud siphons off hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars compared to the few thousand that welfare or unemployment recipients might generate, it seems prudent to attack that problem rather than bully those in need. While Republican legislators in Florida spent time losing over $100,000 of taxpayers’ money – not counting reimbursement costs for lawyers, court costs and testing – chasing down small-ball welfare recipients; whistleblower physicians in Florida separately recovered more than $3 billion in Medicare/Medicaid fraud.
Texas money and effort would be better spent supporting and protecting our physicians who report similar losses due to fraud, waste and abuse. Those same Florida physicians, now operating under the corporate entity Ven-a-Care, exposed a Texas scheme that netted a monetary settlement against Pfizer Inc. and Endo Pharmaceuticals to the tune of $36 million. Imagine if for every one of Florida’s 118 drug-tested welfare recipients we instead unearthed a $36 million dollar fraud. That would fill our state’s coffers with funds left over to rebuild our infrastructure, adequately fund our education programs and develop a meaningful statewide water resource plan. Now that’s the sort of legislation I, as a fiscally responsible Democrat, can support with enthusiasm.
This law is good for easy sound bites, yet, after having not researched readily available data from Florida’s and other states legislative failures, our Republican-led legislature now supports dumping thousands of dollars into bullying those most in need among us.
And folks such as Donna Campbell are “proud” to do it.
By LTC Daniel Boone, Doctor of Clinical Psychology, USAF (Retired)
Candidate for Texas Senate District 25